


Little Talks

by Alexa_Piper



Series: Phic Phight 2020 [5]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Gen, Set after Dan destroyed the world so general content warning for that theme I guess, The apocalypse scene that we all needed, implied identity reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23927065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexa_Piper/pseuds/Alexa_Piper
Summary: Ten years after her only friend caused the world to burn, Valerie finds signs of life in the post-apocalyptic wasteland.Phic Phight prompt by PiperMasters
Series: Phic Phight 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686727
Comments: 6
Kudos: 58





	Little Talks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PiperMasters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PiperMasters/gifts).



> PiperMasters' Phic Phight prompt: How does Vlad react to having to spend ten years watching Dan destroy the world?

She didn’t know what to expect when she glimpsed signs of life on one of the surveillance sweeps. At first it was nothing too noticeable — a shifting of fallen branches to create a path to the lake, or an imprint in the mud that could have been left by someone's shoe. They were tiny indications that someone still lived outside the haven of the world’s only surviving city. The details caught Valerie’s eye — she was a professional, after all — but she was honestly more concerned with searching for weaknesses in their defenses than chasing after the slight possibility of someone out there. The footsteps were likely just smudged animal tracks, and the branches could have been moved by the wind.

It was nothing to concern herself with, but she kept an eye on intermittent camera feeds anyway. Just in case. They couldn’t really afford to allocate power to surveying the abandoned array of mansions, but when she lay in bed unable to sleep her blood rushed in her ears and whispered that there might be someone out there after all.

So, she kept looking.

It didn’t take long for her to notice something else.

The feed from her drone was grainy, and she had to swoop it low to make sure that her eyes weren’t tricking her, but there was no denying what she’d found. In the backyard of a gutted mansion, a patch of weeds had been cleared sometime in the six months since her last sweep of that particular area, and small, tender shoots of green pushed through the soil.

It was a garden. An actual  _ garden _ out in that post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Valerie flew her drone around the side of the building and found another, more advanced patch of cultivated greenery. Tomatoes stood up in rows, their spindly stalks tied to evenly-spaced stakes and swelling with red fruit. Nearby there was a sprawling swathe of pumpkin and zucchini, and beyond that she glimpsed what looked like beans and cucumbers and a neat row of either lettuce or cabbage.

The estate was outside the town’s protective ghost shield, so there was no way that this belonged to anyone living in Amity Park.

She poked around with her drone a little bit more, fingers clammy on the controls, but there was little else of interest. Valerie quickly flew the it back and downloaded the video, preparing to send it to the town’s directors… and paused.

It had been almost a decade since their world was destroyed. For ten years, she’d worked to protect what little life was left. The town was open to any survivors, so whoever owned those gardens would have had ample opportunity to seek the safety of Amity Park.

So why didn’t they?   
She quietly slipped out of the surveillance building. Valerie headed for the nearest exit, trying to ignore the frantic hammering of her heart. She activated her suit when she reached the security booth, nodding to the guards as she made her way through the gate.

They didn’t try to stop her. They’d learned over the years that if you stood in the way of Valerie Gray, she’d pound you into the dust.

The ghost shield tingled against her skin and then she was outside, and the sun beat down around her. Her board folded out from the soles of her boots and Valerie jumped on and jetted through the air, keeping one eye on the tracking array in her visor. She didn’t want to be ambushed now, and could do without the drama of a ghost fight when she’d gone on an exterior excursion without clearance.

She flew over the rubble of old apartment buildings and the rusted remains of ruined cars, sighing at the extent of the destruction. It wasn’t fair what had happened, and the mere thought of the sheer  _ arrogance _ and murderous  _ entitlement _ of the ghost who had caused it all curdled in her heart, but she pushed down the pain and focused on reaching her destination. There was no use crying over the past when there was nothing she could ever do to change it.

Valerie flew between the stubs of pillars that had once flanked the gates to the most lavish housing estate in the region. Most of the buildings had been torn to shreds, with nothing left beyond the remnants of walls that jutted from the ground like broken teeth. The lawns, once so perfectly cultivated, had grown into a waist-high ocean that rippled in the breeze. Broken glass glittered in swathes across the cracked asphalt, throwing the sunlight against her tinted visor at a million different angles.

There was a single building that remained. Nestled in the neglected carnage was one remaining mansion, albeit with tiles missing from the roof and windows that had long since lost their glass. It should have been abandoned, like everything else outside the safety of the shield, and it certainly didn’t appear inhabitable at first glance. The grass out the front was just as long and unkempt as the neighbouring properties, and if Valerie hadn’t spotted signs to the contrary with her drone, she would have thought that it had remained undisturbed for the past decade.

She debated sneaking into the property on foot, but figured that if anyone was actually there then they would have heard her hoverboard by now. She circled the decaying building, peering through the windows for any signs of life.

She felt a bit bad that she hadn’t noticed this place before, but then again, who had the time to look for vegetable patches when they were responsible for the security of the world’s last known stronghold? Everyone had their particular assignments to keep Amity Park safe and running smoothly, so Valerie had settled into the role of head ghost hunter and tried to train a decent security team.

Sometimes she found herself wishing for just one day to relax, but she knew it wasn’t possible. Ghosts always seemed to attack when you least expected it, so if she was always ready, then she’d never be caught by surprise.

Tattered rags that might have once been curtains trailed out of the window frames, and Valerie approached each one slowly, cautious of the way their movement could distract her from anyone waiting inside. It was only after two full laps around the sprawling wreck that she got off her board and stood on the cracked stone doorstep.

She rapped her knuckles against the rotting door frame, squinting through the gap between sagging double doors. “Hello?”

There was no response and she sighed, clouding the bottom half of her visor for a moment before the interior air conditioning defogged the glass. This was the only building that seemed even passably habitable for several blocks, and the gardener must be staying  _ somewhere! _ The tiny paranoid voice that kept her awake at night whispered that it might be a ghost, but she brushed the thought away. Nothing had registered on her radar, and ghosts were usually more dramatic than this. The last time she’d encountered one who liked gardening, it had covered the entire town in giant plants! Ghosts didn’t exactly do things by halves.

The state of humanity was a grim reminder of that.

Gritting her teeth, Valerie shoved her shoulder against one of the decaying doors. It hung so loosely that it scraped across the chipped marble floor, and once the gap was wide enough, she slipped inside.

It wasn’t as dark inside as she’d expected, just… gloomy. Streaks of sunlight reached wavering fingers through the broken windows and their veils of torn curtains, and here and there a bright spot fell across the ground where water and wildlife had eaten away at the roof. The place seemed uninhabited, but as Valerie looked around she caught sight of rows of footprints in the dust. They began where she stood and disappeared through the first door to her right.

A faded portrait on the opposite wall caught her attention, and Valerie’s throat clenched when she realised that she recognised this house. The painting was faded and warped with damage from its partial exposure to the elements, and a streak of white down one side was testament to the bird’s nest balanced on top of the giant, gaudy frame, but the face of the subject was still immediately recognisable.

It was so out of place, like running into your teacher at the supermarket, that for a moment all Valerie could do was stare. Her mind helpfully supplied that, oh yes, she  _ had  _ been to this particular mansion before, but she just hadn’t recognised it in its decay.

She glared at the portrait and followed the footprints. The trail led her into a room lined with sagging shelves covered in books that were probably so damaged as to be unreadable. Mouldering couches that would have once been opulent now shed stuffing through holes likely left by mice, and Valerie’s suspicions were confirmed when she glimpsed tiny pellets of droppings around the room.

Across from the doorway, the fireplace stood cold, empty, and with a semicircle around it clear of dust.

Valerie followed the footprints to it, frowning at the marks on the floor. She rolled her eyes at the melodrama of it all. “Trust you to have a secret room like this,” she huffed, and swept her gaze over the mantelpiece and surrounding wall for anything that could be a switch. It didn’t take long to notice that one of the knobs carved into the beading was suspiciously dust-free, and she folded her glove over it and pushed.

The knob sank into the stonework and the fireplace swung away from the wall, revealing a dark passage behind it. Her breath caught in her chest and Valerie clenched her trembling hands into fists. The night vision in her visor automatically activated as she ignored the voice screaming caution in her head and stepped right in.

The fireplace swung shut behind her.

She gulped and tried to keep her breathing steady as she descended a spiralling staircase in the darkness. Without her suit she wouldn’t have been able to see anything. Thoughts of evil ghosts and serial killers battered her brain and she forced herself to ignore the paranoid part of her subconscious that screamed for her to get out before she was skinned alive.

There was a door at the bottom, and she paused, listening for any sign of what lay behind it. There was little to discern beyond the faint hum of distant machinery, so she eased the door open.

A sliver of light fell across her boots.

She peeked through the gap, surprised to realise that the light was artificial. There must be a generator around here somewhere… which she realised was probably the humming in the background. The room itself looked like it had once been a laboratory, but now had been converted into an apocalyptic bunker. There was a bed pressed against one wall, and a stash of canned food and bottles of water lined up against another. Bunches of onions and herbs hung from the ceiling, and along one of the benches she glimpsed an assortment of kitchen appliances.

A figure sat in an old rocking chair, grey hair hanging limply down his back and falling to obscure his face as he leaned over a book.

She didn’t need to see his face to recognise him.

Valerie retracted her visor, threw the door open, and strode into the lab as if she owned the place. “I thought you were dead,” she snapped.

The man started, the book flying out of his lap and the chair swinging wildly on its rockers as he jerked upright and stared at her. His mouth moved and he made a strange rasping sound, grasping the arms of the chair and leaning forward to regain control of its movement.

She folded her arms across her chest and waited. Any apprehension she’d felt was gone, and the anxious tension in her bones had turned to something sharp that she couldn’t quite place. She didn’t know if she was relieved to see him, or angry enough to rip his heart out.

The man staggered to his feet, dropping a threadbare blanket away from his shoulders and flinging strands of greasy hair out of his eyes. “How did you get in?” he wheezed, his voice scratchy and weak with lack of use.

She cocked her head, pursing her lips as though wondering whether to bother answering. “Uh, the door?”

“No, how did you know I was here?”

Well, then. “I saw your garden on a security drone’s camera. C’mon,  _ seriously? _ I find you rotting in your secret basement like some doomsday prepper and you have the nerve to be pissed off at _ me?!” _

He sighed, sagging against the back of the chair. “I’m hardly rotting.”

She raised an eyebrow and made a show of looking around the room. “Really? This whole place needs a serious clean.”

He bristled. “Well, if you only came here to insult me—”

“Why didn’t you come to Amity?” she interrupted, dropping her arms and stalking closer. “Why are you living in squalor when there’s a safe settlement just down the road?! I thought you were  _ dead! _ I  _ searched _ for you!”

He went so still that for a moment he could have stopped breathing. “Why would you look for  _ me?” _ he whispered.

She was close enough to touch him now, and she wanted to punch him but instead her helmet melted back into her suit so she could run a hand through her brutally short hair. “I don’t know, maybe because we all knew that the crazy ghost murdering everyone had been living  _ in your house?! _ I was scared for you! You gave me my suit and my purpose in life and when I couldn’t find you I thought it was all my fault, that I couldn’t protect you from that… that  _ thing,  _ but you were here and alive all along! I can’t  _ believe _ you!”

He sighed, and drooped like he carried the weight of all the souls who had been lost. “I should have died.”

“Don’t even  _ start _ with that survivor’s guilt right now!”

“No.” His raspy voice caught like branches scratching the window during a storm. “It would have been better if I’d died.”

She stared at him, and the unseen generator’s hum was drowned out by the static in her ears. “Bloody hell,” she snapped when his sad eyes became too much for her to look at. “What do you want, then? Why are you still here?”

He shrugged, but it was a small, defeated gesture. “I still believe in the Daniel from the past. He was always the resourceful type, and if anyone can fix this—”

“Danny’s  _ dead!”  _ Valerie screamed, and sudden tears streamed down her cheeks as hot betrayal pulsed behind her eyelids. “He’s  _ dead, _ and he’s  _ Phantom,  _ the monster who  _ murdered almost everyone on the earth!” _

Her breathing was ragged and sharp, and it swelled in the quiet room.

“You know, it isn’t all him.”

“What do you mean?” she snapped.

Vlad’s answer was soft and sad, and shattered her soul. “That… thing. It’s not entirely Daniel. Half of it — the sadistic, hurtful half — is me.”

“What are you talking about?” she whispered, horror gripping her lungs. Her armour suddenly felt like a weight across her shoulders, dragging her down, squeezing around her ribs until each breath was an effort.

His expression melted with grief. “Valerie, I’m so sorry. If I had known… If I had  _ any idea _ what my invention would do…”

She held up a hand. It was shaking. “Sit down, and tell me everything.”

His face was wet with tears that dripped onto his filthy shirt. Without another word, he motioned for her to take the rocking chair, and sat himself down on the edge of the bed.

She stayed standing for a moment, watching the way the shadows of guilt carved deep fissures around his eyes. She could still leave. A part of her wanted to turn and run, to go back to the sunshine and fly high above the ruins with the wind on her face and clean, dust-free air in her lungs.

But she needed to know.

Valerie steeled herself and took a seat, leaning back and folding her arms across her chest. Tears still slid down her face but she ignored them. “Alright, Mr Masters. I don’t know if I want to hear it, but I need to know why this happened, so enough with the lies. Tell me  _ everything.” _


End file.
